Bert Cardullo – författare

Over the last century, film actors from Charlie Chaplin and Lillian Gish to Meryl Streep and Jeff Daniels have spoken about the art and technique of playing to the camera. This fascinating anthology of their "insiders" observations will delight film lovers and aspiring film actors everywhere. The book has been edited by four leading film and theater historians, who have brought together selections from periodicals and books (some no longer in print), had some statements or conversations translated into English for the first time, and conducted new interviews with working actors. The book is divided into four parts—"The Silent Performance," "Finding a Voice," "European Acting," and "Hollywood Acting"—each of which is introduced by a brief commentary. This chronological and topical structure allows one actor to talk or argue with another as they offer astute—and often contradictory—opinions on a broad range of theoretical concerns. Among the issues they discuss are stage versus screen performance, the spiritual, emotional, and psychological underpinnings of the actor’s art, and the performer’s response to technical demands and other exigencies of filmmaking. The book, which also includes an insightful general introduction, film biographies of the actor-authors, and aptly chosen movie stills, is an essential resource—one that gives us, says Stanley Kauffmann, "the mapping of a new territory in art."

The essays collected here reflect the spectacular rise of Iranian cinema in recent years as well as the strong contributions of contemporary filmmakers from countries such as Belgium, Canada, China, Israel, Lebanon, Scotland, and Spain. But In Search of Cinema does not neglect the best recent films from major film-producing nations like the United States, France, and Italy and includes retrospective pieces on the careers of Ingmar Bergman and Woody Allen as well as several essays on the interrelationship between film form, or film genres, and drama and the novel, the two forms from which the cinema continues to draw a wealth of its material.

'Screen Writings: Genres, Classics, and Aesthetics' offers close readings of genre films and acknowledged film classics in an attempt to explore both the aesthetics of genre and the definition of  'classic' - as well as the changing perception of so-called classic movies over time. Implicitly theoretical as much as it is unashamedly practical, this book is a model not only of film analysis, but also of the enlightened deployment of cultural studies in the service of cinema study.

'Screen Writings: Partial Views of a Total Art, Classic to Contemporary' offers close readings of individual films intended to explain how moviemakers use the resources of the medium to pursue complex and significant humanistic goals. It fills the middle ground between vague, simple plot summaries and theoretical pronouncements. As such, this book can be considered a call for the return of practical criticism as the best way to understand and appreciate the work of cinematic artists.

This book is a collection of interviews with, and essays about, not so much the two non-Western filmmakers who introduced the cinema of their respective countries to the West—Akira Kurosawa (Japan) and Satyajit Ray (India), in the 1950s—but those who followed in their wake. From among them, I have chosen representative figures from such countries as Iran, China, Japan, Turkey, South Korea, Taiwan, Kurdistan, and Afghanistan: Abbas Kiarostami, Jafar Panahi, Majid Majidi, Bahman Ghobadi, Siddiq Barmak, Samira Makhmalbaf, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Hong Sang-soo, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Jun Ichikawa, Kim Ki-duk, Chen Kaige, Zhang Yimou, and Tsai Ming-liang.Waves from the East: New World Cinema, Asian Style documents an alternative to Western brands of cinema, even as these “foreign” directors in some instances integrate Western forms, styles, and genres into their own native traditions. As such, these artists could be said to represent a global filmmaking perspective that now, more than ever, this world—and the American nation in particular—can use. In the case of Iranian filmmakers like Panahi, Majidi, Kiarostami, and the Makhmalbafs, it remains to be seen how much artistic freedom they can retain in the increasingly militant theocracy of Iran. As for Chen Kaige, like Zhang Yimou, something also remains to be seen: the extent to which the Communist Chinese authorities have induced him to make “politics-free” entertainments as opposed to the kind of politically-conscious art films he used to make.Most of the interviews are accompanied by an essay by me on a representative film or films by the director in question. My intent in doing this, of course, is to “bounce” these writings off a director’s own words, to juxtapose what I think of his work against what he, the filmmaker, thinks of his work. The essayist and interviewees don’t always agree, but why must we? Moreover, I have tried to select interviews that are as artistically inclusive as possible. That is, the questions focus on practical matters related to filmmaking as much as they do on historical, aesthetic, and critical-theoretical issues raised by the films themselves. Richly illustrated with film stills, Waves from the East concludes with a bibliography, individual filmographies, and a comprehensive index